Violent Triumphs (White Monarch 3)

“Te extraño mucho, Bianca.” Telling her he missed her very much, my father smiled, flicked ash from his cigar onto the live marigolds surrounding us, and walked away.

Cristiano took his Montecristo from his mouth, pulled my face to his with one hand, and pecked my lips.

I walked around to the rear of the float, waving back at the throngs of parade-goers. With the rat-a-tat-tat of poppers that sounded too close to gunshots, the crowd released a collective gasp. I descended the stairs of the float and hopped off, into the street.

As I made my way through the crowd toward a drink vendor, a dancing skeleton bumped into me so hard, I stumbled in my high heels. Instead of trying to catch my purse as it fell, I covered my stomach. Once I’d righted my footing, it hit me for the first time that my body would change—as would the way I treated it. I’d have to be more careful everywhere I went. I bent and picked up the envelope with the sonogram first, then bit my lip to hide a smile as I tucked it into a side pocket.

As people walked around me, I shoveled my things back into my handbag. I searched the street for my cell phone, then checked to see if it was still in my purse. Unable to find it, I stood and turned, my gaze landing on a mariachi in the crowd with a familiar pair of eyes.

A piercing gaze that sent a chill straight down my spine, then vanished under a sombrero as the man disappeared back into the crowd.

Diego.

No—Diego is dead.

I took a deep breath to try to calm my thumping heart. It wasn’t possible. My current condition was doing things to my brain, and my emotions were overwrought from being back home on the anniversary of Mamá’s death. I rubbed my temples and took a few more steps, squatting again to try to locate my phone.

Mariachi music started from somewhere. I’d been hearing it on and off all day, but now that Diego was on my mind, it took me back to my parents’ room on this same morning twelve years earlier. The haunting echoes of the music through the house. The fan rotating with a breeze from the open windows, casting shadows over Mamá’s body on the tile floor. Diego running in, his gun drawn, acting surprised. Cristiano’s forearm a bar around my waist as his hand clamped over my mouth.

A bout of nausea hit me. Something didn’t feel right. I got back to my feet and started back for the float when a man in a ski mask started toward me.

Fuck. I willed my breathing to slow so I could think. We had no enemies at the moment, but as Cristiano said—the fight was never over. I couldn’t be too careful. I ducked left and hid in a group of dancing women while maneuvering my way back toward the float. They spun, their skirts blending together into reds, greens, and purples.

Diego’s face flashed through the crowd.

But . . . how?

I stepped up onto a curb and furtively looked around. The man’s height set him apart. He removed his sombrero and shook out golden-brown hair. It couldn’t be him. And yet, Diego’s mannerisms were seared into my brain. As long as I lived, I’d never forget the way his long fingers tracked through the strands of his hair. He palmed the sombrero the way he had his cowboy hat at the costume party. As he started to turn toward me, I noticed a bolo tie—but I wouldn’t wait to see if it bore the de la Rosa family crest.

I ran, sprinting through the crowd, pushing people aside.

A man in chalky white face paint and blackened eye sockets stepped in my way, and I stopped short. The skeleton that had bumped into me earlier. I whirled to go another way, but the man dressed in black closed in from another direction.

I had a knife in my purse. I reached in and grabbed it as a voice said in my ear, “If you make a scene, your daddy gets a bullet in the back. Then we start shooting up the crowd, Natalia.”

Air sucked out of my lungs as my scalp prickled. “Who are you?” I asked. “Belmonte-Ruiz?”

He didn’t answer.

My palm sweat around the handle of the knife. I needed to fight back—but as of this morning, physical violence had taken on a new meaning for me. Since my arrival at the Badlands, Cristiano had impressed upon me that I couldn’t ever be afraid to get hurt. I wasn’t. But now that I was carrying his child?

That was different.

I had to protect my body at any cost.

He grabbed my handbag and the knife with it as armed men dressed in black with ski masks over their faces appeared all around me, closing in. With a screeching sound, yelling started. A white van barreled toward us, sending people jumping out of the way.